Survivors: Jennifer Ziegler on Thriving as a Long-Time, Actively Publishing Children's-YA Author

Learn more about Jennifer Ziegler.
Image by Sam Bond Photography. 

By Cynthia Leitich Smith
for Cynsations

In children’s-YA writing, maintaining an active publishing career is arguably an even bigger challenge than breaking into the field.

Reflecting on your personal journey (creatively, career-wise, and your writer’s heart), what bumps did you encounter and how have you managed to defy the odds to achieve continued success? 

I feel as if I have two “breaking in” stories. I began in publishing as a work-for-hire writer, penning mass market YAs for series such as Sweet Valley High Senior Year (1999-2003), Fearless (1999-2004), and Love Stories, as well as some TV tie-ins. I did this IP work (short for “intellectual property”) for years, publishing close to 20 novels.

Usually I wasn’t given a byline, but if I was offered one, I would use a pen name since I didn’t feel complete ownership of the material and was still hoping to one day publish my own characters and stories.

So, in one way, my first book came out in 1997, but my first trade novel (bearing my real name) came out in 2006.

The experience of writing IP/mass market books really helped me navigate the built-in pressures of this career and the bumps and surprises that would come my way. This was true for both craft and business.

On the creative side, I was able to find and fine-tune my process. Due to the tight deadlines, I figured out how to best allocate my time and acquired several good tricks to overcoming writer’s block.

Because I had to defer to the mass market editors and follow the series “bibles” – so that the books could maintain a consistent voice – I learned how to get over myself and could better handle editorial feedback with my trade books.

I had to view each IP book as a for-hire (and fast-paced) job as opposed to an indulgent artistic endeavor. This mindset taught me to not be too precious with my writing and armed me with the weaponry needed to kill proverbial darlings. And because I couldn’t be choosy about projects, I often had to break out of my writer comfort zone. Now I’m not as scared to try new genres, markets, formats, or narrative styles.

Similarly, mass market writing prepared me for pitfalls that might arise on the business side of things.

By the time my first trade book came out, I had already been through the stress of having books canceled, deadlines moved, checks arrive late, story pitches rejected, and editors leave in the middle of a project.

I didn’t have an agent at the time, so I had to adapt to these glitches and heartbreaks on my own. It made me realize that I could handle the life of a writer – that it was worth it.

In the literary world, work-for-hire writing isn’t valued the same way as trade writing, but I’m proud of my mass market experience. I like to think of that time as my publishing “boot camp.” It helped me conquer fears and showed me what I was capable of.

If you had it to do all over again, what—if anything—would you do differently and why?

I probably wouldn’t have used the last name “Ziegler" on my trade novels. "Ziegler" was the name from my first marriage, but I had always planned to publish as Jennifer Ford – my maiden name. I come from a family of storytellers and wanted to honor them in this way. Plus, I felt this name was attached to the writer part of myself -- the young girl who loved to make up stories.

Unfortunately, I was confused when Random House told me my novel Alpha Dog (Delacorte, 2006) would be a “trade paperback” and not a hard cover.

At the time, I didn’t know the difference between mass market paperback and trade paperback and assumed this meant it wouldn’t be reviewed and wouldn’t be part of the school and library market – but it would be chance to prove myself with my own story ideas.

So, I decided to use Jennifer Ziegler and save Ford for when I got a “real” book deal.

But Alpha Dog did receive good reviews and some educators did take notice. Later, when I got the contract for How Not to Be Popular (Delacorte, 2008) and was told it would print first as a hardcover, I asked to publish it under the name "Jennifer Ford." Random House strongly advised me to keep the same byline as my first book, to build on the good press and recognition.

After lots of pondering, I agreed. Only now, I’m no longer in that marriage, nor do I feel I’m the same person (or writer) who went by that name.

In the broad scheme of things, it’s a minor issue. I did start publishing under that name, and it’s the name I share with two of my children, but I do think I’d have chosen differently had I understood the business better.

The field and body of literature are always evolving. For you, what have been the stand-out changes in the world of children’s-YA writing, literature and publishing? What do you think of them and why?

When I was writing my earliest books, the publishing process itself was different – especially regarding tech. If I wanted to talk to my editor, I had to call. I would submit a draft via FedEx. They’d send back a hardcopy editorial letter and a marked-up manuscript with so many post-it notes, it looked feathered.

But to me, the biggest change is the expansion of the industry -- the sheer number of kidlit books, authors, writing programs, and events. And I feel this growth has led to an increase in the amount of respect children’s literature gets.

The number of times I get asked “When are you going to write a real book?” has dropped significantly over the years.

I see more adults openly and unabashedly reading children’s literature, and this appears to be happening in other mediums, as well.

Movies like "Ladybird" (2017) and "Eighth Grade" (2018) aren’t just marketed to teens. TV and graphic novels that center on young people are gaining wider audiences.

I think people are realizing that the age of the protagonist doesn’t matter. Themes are universal, and just because a writer chooses to tell a story through the eyes of a young person, that doesn’t mean it won’t resonate with people much older. A good story is a good story.

What advice would you give to your beginner self, if that version of you was a debut author this year?

Number one: Find your community! I wish I’d done this sooner.

All those years I wrote at home, alone, while my young children were sleeping or in school, I often felt stressed and overwhelmed. It would have helped immensely if I’d discovered SCBWI – or another supportive writers’ group – at that point.

Number two: Learn about the industry. Don’t know the difference between trade and mass market? Look it up. Learn the terminology. Familiarize yourself with key players and events. In addition to reading new, great books in kidlit, read up on the industry, too. Read Cynsations!

And don’t be afraid to ask questions of agents and editors. They are there for you, as partners and mentors, and have different, invaluable perspectives.

What do you wish for children’s-YA writers (and readers), looking to the future?

I want for us, both industry and society, to continue to have those awkward and difficult conversations about representation and imbalances of power.

I hope we can challenge outdated beliefs that children’s books should have a maximum reader age, that once a marginalized person’s story is told, no more need to be told or read, and that books that center on girls are just for girls, but books that center on boys are for everyone. And I want us to be more inclusive of nonbinary characters/readers and consider the needs of those kids, too.

If we want readers to value everyone’s stories, it has to start at the industry level.

Authors, publishers, and gatekeepers should be vigilant about recognizing and changing inherent biases – and we all have them. I don’t just think it would be nice if such change happens, I think it must happen.

As a writer, what do you wish for yourself in the future?

Authors Chris Barton and Jennifer Ziegler

I hope to continue to learn and grow creatively as I learn and grow as a person. I want to write until I literally can’t anymore, so I hope I’m blessed with enough time to set down all the stories simmering inside me.

And I wish the same for my husband and favorite author, Chris Barton. May he write all of his wonderful stories and keep on being my brilliant beta reader.

I also have hopes for my books – that they may find readers who recognize themselves in them, learn from them, and come away inspired to share their own stories.

(Also, if some scientist could make coffee nutritionally complete, that would really help around deadline.)

Cynsational Notes 

The Survivors Interview Series offers in-depth reflections and earned wisdom from children's-YA book authors who have successfully built long-term, actively-publishing careers.

Author Interview: Samantha M. Clark on Being a SCBWI Regional Advisor & the Austin Chapter

Learn more about Samantha M. Clark,
photo by Sam Bond.

By Gayleen Rabakukk
for Cynthia Leitich Smith's Cynsations

Today we take a peek behind the curtain at the planning and preparation required to organize a successful Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators chapter.

I chatted with Austin's Regional Advisor, Samantha M. Clark to get the inside scoop.

How long have you been the Austin RA and what prompted you to take the position? 

I’m now in my fifth year as the RA.

I really love doing it, but it was not something I could do before. I’ve volunteered for SCBWI for the past 10 years, first running a critique group for the Houston chapter and, when we moved to Austin, coordinating the critiques for the conference, among other tasks.

When the former RA left, author Bethany Hegedus, a good friend and generally wonderful person, said I would make a good RA, to which I responded that there was no way I could do the job.

Author-illustrator Shelley Ann Jackson ended up taking over from the former RA, but she asked me to be her assistant. I was a little nervous, but ultimately thought it would be an amazing challenge and experience. And I was right, I loved it.

A few months into the job, however, Shelley was finding a big squeeze on her time. She was doing her MFA (in Writing for Children and Young Adults) at Vermont College of Fine Arts at the time, so she called me up one day and said, “You should be the RA.” I told her no and that she was doing great, but at every meeting she kept saying the same thing.

So finally I said that if she was serious, I was open to it. Even though I never imagined that I’d head up an SCBWI chapter, I’ve found that it’s something I really enjoy.

Amy Farrier, Samantha and Shelley Ann Jackson, Austin SCBWI's leadership team in 2013.

How many members are in the Austin chapter? 

We have close to 330 members, which is double the number when I first took this job. I’m astounded at the growth we’ve had in the last few years and always excited to see so many first timers at our monthly meetings and conference. Come on, join us!

Tell me about the local conference. When do you start planning it? How do you choose speakers? 

I do love our local conference. When I took over as RA, I revamped the (now two-day) conference and gave it the name Austin SCBWI Writers & Illustrators Working Conference.

I had envisioned a blend of a retreat and a conference, and while we’ve never ended up with alone working time in the schedule, like at a regular retreat, we do try to offer sessions that go deep and get attendees working.

Our goal is the same every year—and we tell our faculty this when we send out invitations: For our attendees to go home able to lift their work to the next level. We try to have something for writers and illustrators at all levels, from beginners to advanced, and we try to cover both craft and career.

For our Saturday breakouts, we have tracks for writers (picture books, novels or both), illustration and professional development for the business side. We also have keynotes that are geared at being more inspirational as well as learning, a panel with our speakers from the publishing side to answer attendee questions about the industry, and, on Sunday, intensives for picture books, novels and illustration.

A few years ago we added a panel of local authors and illustrators to kick off the whole weekend. I especially like this because everyone on the panel was once in the audience and I want all the attendees to know that, with hard work and perseverance, they could be the ones on the stage soon. 

We start planning at least a year in advance—I’m working on 2019 now but also thinking about 2020—and after organizing five conference, I’m starting to feel like I’m getting a handle on it.

It begins with deciding who our out of town faculty will be. We bring in one author, one illustrator, two editors, two agents and one art director. We aim to be as diverse as we can, with ethnicity as well as what they create. So, if we have an author who writes fantasy one year, we’ll try to get someone who writes a different genre the following year. Same with illustrators and their styles and mediums.

With agents and editors, we try to bring in people from different publishing houses/agencies, big and small, from year to year, as well as match agents and editors so that collectively, they represent as many age groups and genres as possible.

It takes a lot of planning, and we have to invite people early because speakers’ schedules fill up fast. We often have to do multiple invitations because people are busy, so to create the best faculty possible, it takes a lot of research and time.

While we’re looking for the out of town faculty, we also open up for proposals from our local faculty. We use a proposal system because we have so many amazing authors and illustrators in our local area and they have much better ideas about sessions than we do.

We do try to share the spots from year to year, so we can showcase as many of our local creatives as possible. But ultimately, we look at all the proposals along with the sessions from our out of town faculty and choose ones that combined will make a balanced conference that covers many different topics. It’s a lot of planning, but my hope is that through it, we’ve got a conference that is living up to its mission to help attendees lift their work to the next level.

There are several scholarships connected to the conference. Can you tell me about those? 

Yes! I’m very proud of our scholarships and awards. Through our Betty X Davis Young Writers of Merit Award, named after our oldest member, who’s now 102 and a huge inspiration, we honor three young writers every year, giving a $500 scholarship to the high school student when they start college. We hear these writers read their work at the conference and I’m always so impressed.

Betty X. Davis with the 2017 Young Writers winners and Lindsey Lane,
SCBWI volunteer. Photo by Sam Bond.

Our Creators of Diverse Characters Scholarship offers one full scholarship and one half scholarship to a picture book writer, novel writer and an illustrator to go to our annual conference. This is designed to encourage the creation of diverse worlds, in race, sexuality, religion, etc. We’re also working on a program that will award scholarships to writers and illustrators in marginalized groups and hope to begin that next year.

We also have two-year-long mentorships, one for writers and one for illustrators. Our newest is the Emerging Voice Illustrator Mentorship. The winner is chosen from the Portfolio Showcase at our conference. We rotate the mentors, and this year, it’s Don Tate, who’s a wonderful author-illustrator.

For illustrators at the conference, we also have a Portfolio Showcase Contest, which awards two honors with gift certificates and a winner with gift certificates and a free year’s membership to SCBWI.

On the writers’ side, we have the Cynthia Leitich Smith Writing Mentor Award, named after Cynsations’ own Cynthia Leitich Smith to honor how generous she is to those starting out. The mentorship is modeled after the Houston SCBWI chapter’s Joan Lowery Nixon Memorial Award.

I won the mentorship years ago with the manuscript that will be published by Simon & Schuster next month, The Boy, The Boat, And The Beast (June 26, 2018), so it was really important to me that Austin have a similar program to help other writers.

Cynthia was our first mentor for the award, and since then, other local authors have been the mentors on a rotating basis.

Our 2018 mentor is Jennifer Ziegler, who is choosing her mentee from manuscripts nominated by our conference faculty from their critiques.

How has SCBWI helped you in your path to publication?

I could write a whole blog post on this question alone!

SCBWI has helped me enormously, with learning at conferences, meeting people, making friends… But I can give you a specific example with the journey of my debut book, The Boy, The Boat, And The Beast.

Laurent Linn

I started writing the manuscript when I was volunteering for the Houston SCBWI critique group. They helped me hone the opening pages. The manuscript won the Houston chapter’s Joan Lowry Nixon Award, which was a year’s mentorship with the fantastic Newbery Honor author Kathi Appelt.

I was recommended to my agent, Rachel Orr of Prospect Agency, by agent Liza Pulitzer Voges, who had met me at the first Austin SCBWI conference I organized. Liza loved my work, but said she wouldn’t be the right agent for it. She recommended me to Rachel, and after being in the query trenches more than two years, the manuscript finally found its agent home.

Coincidentally, the art director we had brought in for that same conference, Laurent Linn with Simon & Schuster, is now the art director for my book. I had told him about the book at the conference.

Four years later, when he heard my editor talking about it in a production meeting, he remembered the story and asked to work on it. I couldn’t be more grateful for the work he has done to make it beautiful.

All of these things I can directly point to SCBWI, but as I said, over the years, I have learned so much at SCBWI conferences, webinars, books, podcasts, articles…

And, perhaps, most important are the friends I’ve made through SCBWI. The organization promotes support and encouragement, and its members follow suit. I’ve made friends in the chapters where I’ve been a member and, as an RA, I’ve made friends with chapter volunteers from around the world. SCBWI has been and continues to be my teacher, my guide, my cushion. I wouldn’t have a career without it.

Samantha with other RAs at the 2016 SCBWI LA Conference

Are there other Austin events beyond the monthly meeting and the annual conference?

Oh, yes! We stay busy. We have webinars at various times throughout the year, but we also organize workshops, networking events, and new since last year, retreats.

Last year, we held our first Novel Writing Retreat, with workshops, roundtables and lots of writing and social time. This year, we’re working on our first Picture Book Retreat, Sept. 14-16.

We also have Online Book Clubs for PB, MG and YA, where members can discuss and analyze books to help their own work. We have critique groups all over the Austin area and more being organized all the time. And from time to time, we try to arrange a lunch with an author or illustrator so people can ask questions.

What's the best part of being an RA?

This is a fun question because there are so many best parts of being an SCBWI RA:

• Working with our fantastic Assistant Regional Advisor P.J. Hoover and Illustrator Coordinator C.S. Jennings, as well as our other wonderful volunteers.
•  Meeting new writers and illustrators—I feel like I gained a huge friendly family when I took on the job.
•  When one of our members says they learned something or made a positive connection through one of our events.
•  Getting thank you emails from members after I’ve helped them in some way. Everyone is seriously so nice!
•  When one of our members signs with an agent or gets a book deal that came out of a connection or advice received at one of our events… I could go on.

Being an RA is a lot of work, but the rewards are endless.

C.S., Sam and P.J. planning Austin SCBWI events.

Are there any downsides? 

Well... the job is a lot of work.

Outside of what our members see, the events require a lot of organization and brainstorming, much of which is time consuming. Plus, the RA has to submit a number of reports to the SCBWI HQ, keep up with what’s going on with international SCBWI programs as well as other chapters, and respond to emails from members, prospective members and people seeking information about kidlit.

A lot of emails…

Being an RA is a voluntary position and I have a lot of commitments outside of that—especially right now, with next month’s release of The Boy, The Boat, And The Beast—so I have to fit in all the SCBWI work when I can.

But I try to get as many volunteers involved as possible, which I think is key for two reasons:

1. If I have less to do, I can do more for the chapter with the little time I have. And, perhaps more importantly, 
2. It’s important for our members to feel like it’s their chapter and they’re contributing as part of the greater family. 

We give lots of perks to our volunteers to thank them for their time, but people sign up to volunteer because they want to get involved and meet other members. Volunteering is the best way to do that, so to me, having lots of people involved is the best all around.

Cynsational Notes

Samantha M Clark has always loved stories about ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. After all, if four ordinary brothers and sisters can find a magical world at the back of a wardrobe, why can't she? While she looks for her real-life Narnia, she writes about other ordinary children and teens who've stumbled into a wardrobe of their own.

In a past life, Samantha was a photojournalist and managing editor for newspapers and magazines. She lives with her husband and two kooky dogs in Austin, Texas.

Samantha is the Regional Advisor for the Austin chapter of the Society of Children’s Book Writers & Illustrators, and explores wardrobes every chance she gets. Follow her on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.